Facebook Changes Its Mission, CEO Explains Why

Zuckerberg – the Chief Executive Officer of the social media giant – has spent the last dozen years in ensuring that you know what religion you friends’ practice, what your friends’ relationship status is, what is their thought on politics, what will your or their babies look like in the future, etc. But now, the CEO is saying that connecting people online is not enough.

Facebook believes connecting people online is just a part of their goal

The social networking site has transformed media and politics, allowed people to voice their opinions publicly, read both true and fake news, etc. In this time and day, it is very important to keep updated on the social media and the tech giant is partly the reason behind it. However, the social networking site is acknowledging now that connecting people is not enough for them.

In a recent interview to CNN Tech, the Facebook CEO said, “We used to have a sense that if we could just do those things, then that would make a lot of the things in the world better by themselves.” He added, “But now we realize that we need to do more too. It’s important to give people a voice, to get a diversity of opinions out there, but on top of that, you also need to do this work of building common ground so that way we can all move forward together.”

Further, the social networking site said in its new mission statement that their mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Further, the previous mission statement of the tech giant said that the mission of the social network is “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

Zuckerberg has the right tools for the mission

On Wednesday, in his interview, he told Laurie Segall of CNN Tech, “A lot of what we can do is to help create a more civil and productive debate on some of the bigger issues as well.” Since 2012, this was the first time the CEO was so forthcoming about his mission in an interview.

According to the social network, it has right tools for the mission as well – the new Group features. The feature of the tech company will feature at the beginning of its first “Communities Summit” in Chicago. According to the news outlet, over 300 Facebook Group administrators from across the country are coming to join the two-day event to listen to speeches made by Zuckerberg and other executives. There will be talk about several topics, including conflict resolution. The CEO said, “A lot of the important stuff that needs to happen in the world [is] global … whether that’s addressing challenges like stopping climate change or stopping pandemic diseases or terrorism. None of these things can happen just by one country or group of people deciding to do it. There’s no top-down structure to enable that, so the will needs to be built bottom up.”

Nishtha Singh is a iStartup staff reporter who covers tech news, including review of devices, emerging startups, acquisitions, gadgets, Cars, Cloud, EVs, AR, VR, AI and more. Further, she is a reader, a tech-enthusiast, and a writer. Editor at Teenage Publishing and proof-reader at Evoque Publishing.